There was this line in the research of Brené Brown, one of my academic mentors, that stopped me in my tracks when I first encountered it: in the absence of love and belonging, there’s always suffering. Brené spoke from three decades of her experience as a social worker, but even though I didn’t have the same experience, I knew it to be profoundly true. I knew it from years of doing cognitive-behavioral therapy with trauma and abuse survivors. I knew it, to be honest, from my own experience of growing up in Russia and never feeling like I belonged, neither in my family, nor in school, or in the country as a whole.

So with all poetry put aside, I got curious: what does belonging really mean? What is the transparent, measurable and observable definition of it? Why is it so important? What exactly does the human brain experience in the absence of it? Which places, environments, cultures, and relationships make us feel like we do belong, which – like we don’t belong, and why?

The answers didn’t take long to emerge. Remarkably, belonging was the topic where they emerged from people’s interviews and therapy sessions far sooner than they did from the literature – and when the latter caught up, there was a perfect alignment (I didn’t have such luck researching empathy and power).

First, the basic definition of belonging came out clear: belonging means feeling like we’re an important part of something bigger than us – a family, a church, an institution, a community of even an entire country. Neurobiologically, it’s just as basic of a human need as the need for shelter, food, and oxygen, simply because we are social species. The need to be connected to, recognized by, and integrated among our fellow human beings is hardcoded in the brain. You just can’t change it. In the absence of it (and here my research expands on what Brené empirically found), there’s not just suffering, there’s a very specific kind of suffering. Namely, there’s trauma, meaning the experience processed by the brain as a threat to survival or a deprivation of a basic need. That’s a big, existential deal.

How do we create belonging then? The second key piece of data came from juxtaposing belonging and fitting in. I think the best definition of this contrast was given by high school students, and I could totally relate to it myself. Fitting in means changing who you are to be seen as cool, to be liked, approved, and accepted. It means contorting yourself into a version that meets others’ expectations, standards, and requirements. It means orphaning parts of your identity, silencing your authentic voice, and betraying your own values in order to gain approval. Belonging, on the other hand, implies feeling loved and accepted because of who you are, not despite it.

Therefore, true belonging is the feeling you experience in an environment, place, or relationship that doesn't require you to change who you are, so you could fit in and survive, but demands that you be who you are, so you could grow to your full potential and thrive.

While this definition might sound a bit poetic, it accurately captures the finding crucial for teams and corporations. When in a position of leadership, we don’t want our employees to be in the survival mode. We want them to bring their full potential to the table and thrive. Because our business will thrive as a result.

This point, although supported by burgeoning evidence in the global leadership research, largely disrupts the traditional paradigm of power, which still keeps a stronghold in many corporate cultures: the paradigm of compliance, fear-and-control-based management, zero-sum thinking and treating power as an inherently scarce, finite resource.

The difference in market outcomes between fitting-in and belonging cultures is measurable and observable. A belonging culture in the workplace leads to a considerable boost in creativity, innovation, agility, and competitive performance. One of the reasons is what naturally flows from belonging: the respect and proactive promotion of diversity.

The reality is, historical institutions of oppression like patriarchy, white supremacy, homophobia and heterosexism, classism, ableism and so on, have for centuries made millions of people feel like they didn’t belong – in school, in church, in the workplace, in positions of responsibility and at decision-making tables. And if you think this only targeted minorities, think twice: women have never been a minority in terms of populational proportion, but the way misogyny has historically worked – through denials of opportunity, stereotyping, dehumanization – is the exact same way that racism, homophobia, and other identity-based oppression worked. While all oppression was rationalized and naturalized by formally logical narratives, what lay at its core was the same: scarcity and greed around power. It was the model of power-over, the one that says power is an inherently finite resource, which has to be kept and hoarded in the hands of the privileged few.

There’s no evidence anywhere that such concept, and its corresponding practice, of power has ever been efficient. And that’s why global market economy is now shifting, although rather slowly, towards the alternative paradigms of power with, power to, and power among. The feminist movement has played a great role in studying and implementing these alternatives back in 1960s.

In retrospect, though, the point seems quite obvious. We’re all different, and because of that we have different perspectives on the world. Gender, age, religion, sexuality, education, cultural background, physical ability and other identity attributes inform the layers of the lens through which we experience life. And instead of erasing those differences, or deluding ourselves that some people see the world more accurately than others because of who they are, we can leverage those differences to aggregate perspectives, make better judgments and improve our foresight. Diversity of people creates diversity of ideas at the meeting tables, including those where strategic decisions are made. This becomes the opposite of groupthink and echo chambers. Managing that diversity, by contrast to conventional conformity and compliance, requires growing the skills of perspective-taking, paradoxical thinking, and rumbling with privilege – but the time and effort invested into it pays back with creative, smart solutions that are otherwise impossible to find.

Although diversity policies and slogans are now common in the Western world, their implementation is not always as straightforward. When an organization promotes its commitment to equality or even equity, but then fails to embed corresponding fair practices in the culture, or employs practices that effectively create reverse discrimination, trust corrodes and belonging becomes impossible. The key is to commit to practicing both critical thinking and emotional intellect dealing with these complex, and sometimes controversial, issues.

One of the ways to create a different focus in conversations about structural inequality. Most of them zoom in tight on oppression, discrimination, stigma and other realities that lie beneath the hypothetical line of equality. But we don’t have enough conversations, and conversations deep enough, about what lies above it – that is, privilege. The word itself it thrown around a lot, but aside from having a very negative, almost offensive cultural connotation, we rarely see it deconstructed and explained – while when talking to people at corporate tables, we have to reckon with privilege being a significant part of their existential experience. Knowing how to talk about it with empathy, generosity, and curiosity, as opposed to blaming and self-righteousness, is key to turning equality from a conversational argument to a measurable and observable cultural reality.